Major Montague Lambert, RE (1838-1880)
/Major Montague Lambert, RE is commemorated by a memorial in the North Quire Aisle.
The arms of Montague Lambert as they appear on his memorial: Or on a mount an oak tree vert; a greyhound courant gules.
In Memory of
Major Montague Lambert
Royal Engineers
who died when Instructor of Surveying etc. at the School of Military Engineering, Chatham,
on the 6th. February 1880
aged 41 years.
Erected by his Brother Officers and Friends.
Major Lambert was born in Boulogne on the 1st September 1838, the younger son of Francis John Lambert and grandson of Sir John Lambert of Mount Ida, Norfolk
He was educated in France and at a preparatory school at Shooters Hill before entering the Royal Military Academy, , Woolwich, which he joined under the old nomination system in April 1854. He was commissioned into the Royal Engineers as Lieutenant on 21st June 1856.
From the R.E.Journal, April 1880:
After his initial training at Chatham he served at Aldershot until May 1859, and then proceeded to Malta. He later spent a short time at the Curragh, but was then sent to take charge of the building of Fort Nelson at Portsmouth. He was promoted Captain on 25th January 1866. After various other appointments he was chosen to be Assistant Military Secretary to General Munro CB, commanding troops in the West Indies.
On his return from the West Indies he eventually became Instructor in Surveying at the School of Military Engineering, Chatham. He remained in that post until the end of January 1880, when he caught a severe cold. He nevertheless journeyed to Shoeburyness on 30th January to visit the Rev. E. P. B. Wynne, Rector of South Shoebury, the father of the lady to whom he was engaged to be married. Soon after his arrival he was taken seriously ill with inflammation of the lungs and died on 6th.February.
Although he never saw active service in all the twenty four years in the army, he was held in the greatest esteem, as being a most efficient and able officer. He was particularly proficient as a linguist and a draughtsman.
From the notebooks ‘The Naval and Military Memorials of Rochester Cathedral’ (1979)
by Roy Trett, OBE, TD,
Rochester Cathedral Chapter Library
The medieval tombs of the Presbytery and Quire Transept have had a tortured history which many effigies apparently moved and several defaced along with the medieval memorials and brasses over the Early Modern period.
Rochester Cathedral features an exceptionally large collection of Colonial-era military memorials and artefacts. This series has begun to highlight the stories behind these collections and their place in our global heritage.
